Advanced Charge-Storage Materials for Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

MnO2 continues to gain traction in the research and development of advanced supercapacitor materials due to its arsenal of advantages, such as high capacitance, low cost, natural abundance, and environmental benignity. However, its low conductivity has hindered its adoption into real-life applications. Compositing MnO2 with conductive additives has proved to be a promising route for the improvement of its power-energy characteristics. Four novel colloidal techniques were developed for the synthesis of MnO2-CNT composites with enhanced performance at high active mass loading. One strategy utilized a Schiff-based linkage of dispersants such as 3,4-Dihydroxybenzaldehyde (DHB) and Toluidine Blue O (TDB) to effectively mix and disperse MnO2 and CNT. Secondly, a co-dispersion technique was also investigated using Gallocyanine to improve dispersion and mixing of MnO2 and MWCNT. Third, a novel liquid-liquid extraction technique opened new avenues in agglomerate-free processing of individual components, which allowed enhanced electrode performance. Lastly, a morphology-modification strategy was also undertaken by synthesizing MnO2 nanorods with the use of advanced organic dispersants to control the aspect ratio and composite nanorods with MWCNT. The second major material investigated was polypyrrole (PPy), a polymer material with high conductivity, ease of synthesis, low-cost, and non-toxicity. However, its low cyclic stability was prevented it from being applied for real-world applications. Certain anionic and aromatic dopants have shown to improve the conductivity and cyclic stability. Therefore, one of the investigations in this work attempted to improve the performance of PPy-CNT composites by use of a novel anionic dopant, Sunset Yellow (SY). For all investigations electrodes with high mass loadings were produced to achieve high areal capacitance, thus ensuring the practicality of the techniques